Lori Hayes grew up in the greater Philadelphia
neighborhood of Germantown. A pivotal child-
hood experience was seeing the aftermath of a
tree falling on her grandfather's 1958 Chevy Bel
Air on a clear – blue-sky day in 1967. "We kids had
just gone around the corner to the store for bread.
When we came back, I ran to the second floor of
the house to look at the scene from above. I cried
because that was the family car, the one that took
us all to the shore every weekend. It took three days
to get that cleaned up." Fortunately, Lori's grand-
father car was replaced by insurance with a new
car, but in her work now, on the occasion when
she and her team respond to a downed tree in
Philadelphia, she can feel a particular empathy for
anyone who's impacted by those kinds of events.
Lori's grandmother influenced her in the realm of
plants in a major way, especially since her grand-
parents lived in the same house. "Every room in
the house except the bathroom had plants," Lori
says. "My grandmother had the enclosed porch
modified to add heat and bay windows so she
could enlarge her plant collection. I remember that
she brought back crown of thorns and avocado
seeds from Bermuda; they weren't so strict in
those days about moving plant materials."
Lori recently went to a pop-up plant sale where she
saw a single variegated Swiss cheese plant (Monstera
sp.) plant on sale for $450. "I'm drawn to variegated
plants so I picked it up and when I looked at the
price, I was stunned but also tickled to think that at
this local Germantown gathering, here was this plant
that should probably have security and an alarm. I
told the vendor that I bet my grandmother would've
taken a little piece of that," she says, chuckling.
As a teenager, Lori went into horticulture at W.B. Saul
High School of Agricultural Sciences and found that
she loved plant identification; she remembers fondly
her rigorous Plant ID instructor, Dr. Ron Attarian,
who is still teaching and mentoring. "I would come
home and label my grandma's many plants with 3 x
5 cards," Lori says. "Because of my studies with Ron,
I knew indoor plants like the back of my hand."
After she graduated from Saul High School, Lori
went to Temple University in Philadelphia to study
ornamental horticulture; during the summers Lori
interned in Philly's Fairmount Park. Upon graduation
she began her career with Philadelphia Parks first
as a ground worker level 1, 2, and then 3, and then
by being a landscape projects technician working
with landscape architect Carol Gangwere. "She
Getting to Know Philadelphia
Director of Urban Forestry
Lori Hayes
Lori Hayes is the Director of Urban Forestry at Philadelphia Parks and
Recreation. She is a 2017 Municipal Forestry Institute (MFI) grad.
10 CityTREES
